


All The Things We Never Did Alone

by Qpenguin98



Series: Brothers AU [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Brothers AU, I guess???, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Keith and Shiro are Adoptive Siblings, Misgendering, Other, Trans Keith (Voltron), a side thing, for all of you wondering what the original was like, here it is, relationships are like, there isnt actually a second chapter but it does add like 3000 words so, this isnt a shippy fic, ummmm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-20
Updated: 2016-11-13
Packaged: 2018-08-16 06:02:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8090314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Qpenguin98/pseuds/Qpenguin98
Summary: Shiro meets her when she’s nine and he’s sixteen.





	1. Chapter 1

Shiro meets her when she’s nine and he’s sixteen. A scowl sits on her face and she can’t seem to decide between crossing her arms or holding the straps of her backpack.

His parents are finalizing papers with the adoption agency, something he should probably be paying attention to but isn’t. Instead, he sits down next to her and sticks out his hand.

“My name’s Takashi Shirogane, but you can call me Shiro.”

She stares at his hand for a second before taking it hesitantly.

“Karen.” She says it like it burns.

He smiles and shakes her hand.

“You know, I’ve never actually met a Karen before? It’s one of those names everyone makes you think is common, but it actually isn’t!”

“Well I’ve never met a Takashi before, and no one says that that’s a common name, so I guess you win.”

He laughs and she looks taken aback.

“I guess you’re right!”

She can’t seem to decide between smiling or scowling more, so she settles for an uncomfortable mix of both.

Shiro looks over at his- _their_ \- parents.

“I think they’re almost done, are you ready?”

Whatever progress he might have made seems to go out the window as she draws back into herself, arms crossing again.

“Yeah,” she says, and it’s small and forced.

He hopes it isn’t always this forced.

\---

So far, it has always been this forced.

Karen refuses to call their parents mom and dad, which, if Shiro’s being honest with himself, he can’t really blame her. Knowing strangers for two months and being expected to call them mom and dad just sounds uncomfortable.

But even still, she doesn’t hardly talk to any of them. Any conversations Shiro has with her are always started by him. She replies with one word answers and tries her best to avoid talking.

He just wants to know what she likes, what her favorite color is, why she keeps coming home with bruises on her knuckles and calls from the office. He assumed that he’d be the better person to talk to about it, rather than their parents. He might not be that close in age to her, but at least he’s still in school

Nothing he tries works, but he’s determined.

 The opportunity presents itself one day when he gets a knock on his bedroom door.

“Mom, I told you I’m doing homewo-”

He does not open the door to his mom, having to look down after a second of expecting someone taller.

Karen stands there with her arms crossed defensively in front of her chest.

“What’s up?” he tries to sound casual, but this is a first. She never comes to him for anything.

“Can you cut my hair?”

“What?”

“Can you cut my hair,” she repeats, a little quieter.

Why not ask their mom, he wonders. She’s the one that’s good with scissors.

“Why not mom?”

“She’s not here right now and I don’t, I’m not sure she’d actually do it.”

“Why wouldn’t she?”

“Because I want it short like yours.”

She wants it short? Boy short?

“Are you sure?”

She nods.

Well, who is he to stop her?

“Okay.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Everyone should chop off all their hair at some point.”

She practically bounces her way to the bathroom, sitting down and wrapping a towel around her shoulders.

“I’m just gonna say before we start this, I don’t really cut hair that often, or ever, so you’ve been given fair warning if I entirely mess it up.

She nods again, hair flopping around, and he starts cutting.

He takes this time to ask her what she likes again, and this time he actually gets an answer. He learns that her favorite color is red, but sometimes she hates it and switches to black. He learns that she like playing kickball at recess but doesn’t like foursquare. She lets slip that she doesn’t know how to ride a bike yet, and he files that away to tell their parents later.

He learns that she really, really, _really_ like space.

“And did you know that there’s a constellation that looks like a triangle that’s fabled to be three sisters that were trapped in a tree by a bear? I mean, that’s a shortened version I can’t remember the whole story.”

Shiro hasn’t really said much, letting her talk about whatever she wants, so he says and enthusiastic “That’s really cool,” to let her know he’s listening.

She’s quiet for a second as Shiro finishes up her hair.

“Is it okay for girls to like boy stuff?”

“Of course,” he says without missing a beat.

“The kids at school don’t think so.”

“Well they are gonna hate your haircut.”

It takes him a second to realize he said the wrong thing, and Karen’s clammed up again. He sets the scissors down.

“Ah that’s, not what I meant to say I meant that what other people say shouldn’t matter. If you liking kickball or having short hair makes you happy, then you shouldn’t even listen to what other people say.”

She doesn’t say anything and he sighs.

“I know that that’s some of the hardest advice to actually take, along with just ignoring it. What people say hurts, and just ignoring it is a load of cr-, uh, stuff.”

“Shiro, I know the word crap.”

Shiro comes around to face where she sitting and sits down in front of her.

“When I was your age, I used to get picked on for liking ‘girlier’ stuff. My mom taught me how to focus my thoughts instead of lashing out. She said that ‘patience yields focus’ and that sometimes you have to know when to let things go.”

She looks disappointed in what he’s telling her.

“But she also taught me how to fight.”

Her face lights up.

“The first part’s just as important, so before I teach you how to fight, I’m teaching you how to control your emotions, okay?”

She nods with a huge smile on her face, tiny pieces of hair sprinkling down around her.

“But first you should take a shower. You’ve got hair all over you.”

She seemed to have forgotten about the haircut and she jumps up to look in the mirror. Her hands come up to touch it.

“Thank you, Takashi.”

\---

Shiro moves into the Garrison fully when he’s almost twenty-one. He’s been going since he was fourteen, but decided to stay at home because his family was there, his friends were there, and later, Karen was there.

But now he’s very much an adult and spends enough time at the Garrison that he already practically lives there, so he figured it was time.

For her thirteenth birthday, their parents finally got Karen a phone, and she’s been texting him nonstop since he moved out.

He’s really tried to be a good brother and text her back, but sometimes there’s just so many that he just doesn’t send anything.

He does actually have a lot more responsibilities since moving in, now that they can call on him whenever they want, so most of the time when he says he’s busy, he actually is. But sometimes he sends it just to get some time to himself.

This continues on after his birthday, where he noted that she didn’t really try to talk to him that much, but he doesn’t have time to say anything about it, because his workload gets a whole lot heavier.

He knows something’s wrong, but he can’t bring himself to start the conversation, and he’s lucky if he gets a text a week from her.

His mom calls a couple months later, asking if he can come back home this weekend, because something’s wrong with Karen and she won’t talk to anyone else but him.

He mentally curses himself for ignoring it for this long and promises her that he’ll be home. He tells his superior officer that he needs to go home this weekend, that there’s some family problems he needs to take care of, and she sends him home without question.

His mom tells him that she and his dad won’t be home, but Karen should still be there when he gets to the house.

He opens the door to find her curled up in the couch, headphones in, doodling in her sketchbook. She barely looks up at him, removing one earbud.

“Hey,” he tries to start.

“I know you’re only here because mom asked you to come home.”

“That’s not, I mean that’s kind of true, but I’m worried about you too.”

 There’s blood on her fingers and he knows there’s something very, very wrong.

“Mmm,” is all she says, not looking up from the book. He sits down next to her, not close enough to see what’s on the page, but she closes it anyway.

“Karen-”

She puts the earbud back in, looking away. He covers his face in his hands and groans.

Then she yanks them out aggressively and turn to face him.

“Fight me.”

“Okay,” he says, because he owes her this much, a fair fight.

It’s messy and dirty, and she lands a lot of low blows, maybe because he’s going easy on, giving her an outlet for her anger instead of actually fighting back.

She just yells at him.

“Actually fight me!”

So he does, and he wins in a matter of moments. She’s on the ground, clutching at a part of her arm he knows he didn’t hit. There’s blood seeping up under her sleeve.

“Why are you bleeding?”

“Shiro it’s not-”

“No this is hand to hand you shouldn’t be bleeding.”

“Takashi please-”

“Is this why mom called me home? Because Karen that’s-”

“Don’t call me that!”

Shiro’s shocked into silence. Call her what?

“Call you what?”

She doesn’t say anything, eyes shut tight. He pulls the both of them upright. He knows she’ll talk when she wants to, knows not to push her.

“I don’t want to be called Karen anymore.”

He doesn’t say anything, just waits.

“I… I want to go by Keith.”

“What?”

“I think I’m a boy.”

She’s anxiously looking between the ground and him.

He, Shiro numbly thinks. It’s He now.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” And then he realizes he probably wanted to, but he’s been ignoring every text.

“I figured that you were already busy enough that you didn’t need to deal with this, and I didn’t know how you’d take it so I just, tried to ignore it.”

He pulls Keith into a hug and feels him relax.

“Have you told mom and dad yet?”

He shakes his head.

“Do you want me to help you tell them?”

He’s quiet for a second, like he didn’t expect him to say yes. Shiro realizes exactly how shitty of a brother he’s been.

“Yeah, I do.”

They go inside and settle the details of what to tell them and what not to tell them over hot chocolate.

\---

Keith gets accepted into the Garrison when he’s fourteen, and he decides to live there. Shiro pulls some strings and they’re able to room together.

Predictably their parents took it well, and his name is legally changed before he starts so that he doesn’t have to deal with explaining the situation to every one of his teachers.

He doesn’t have a lot of friends, but he makes it to the top of his class in record time. Shiro’s proud, but he still wants him to get used to other people.

He invites his friend Matt over more often, partly so that they can study together, and partly to socialize Keith a little more. He’s worried that Matt won’t make a good impression, or Keith will dislike him outright.

Matt charms him with conspiracy theories and Shiro wonders why he was ever worried.

The only problem with Matt coming over more is that Shiro’s forced to admit he might, just a little bit, have feelings for him.

He can’t keep it to himself, so he spills to Keith when he cuts his hair.

“I mean, is it legal to have that pretty of eyes? It shouldn’t be. He’s just, really, really cute Keith and I don’t know what to do.”

“Well, I did not expect the gay panic to come from him, but I’m not surprised.”

“Hey hey, I prefer pan, but what do I do?”

“You could try admitting your feelings and make out with him.”

“I can’t do that! What if he doesn’t even like boys? And even if he does, what if he doesn’t like me? I mean, why would he like me? He so smart and I’m-”

“Shiro! Breathe.”

He does.

“Now, I love hearing about how much you wanna mack on Matt, but I would prefer you not get hysterical while you’re holding a sharp object next to my head.”

Shiro remembers what he’s doing and pulls the scissors back. “Fu- fudge sorry.”

“Shiro, I’m not twelve.”

“Yeah, but you’re still a kid.”

“Um, I’ve entered my angsty teen stage, thank you.”

“Yeah, that’s not an age group.”

Shiro wins their argument, and Keith tells him to tell Matt.

\---

He walks in on Shiro and Matt kissing a few weeks later, and leaves with his eyes covered and a thumbs up.

\---

Shiro’s still the only one that Keith will let cut his hair. If anyone else even suggests it, he gets bitter and snippy.

They use it as a time to talk about whatever.

Keith is fifteen and Shiro is twenty-two, and Keith is unnaturally silent for getting a haircut.

“Is everything okay?”

“I think I’m gay.”

It’s not what Shiro expected, but he had assumptions.

“Okay.”

“That’s… alright?”

“Why wouldn’t it be?”

“I just, I can be both?”

Shiro knows what he means.

“Keith, your gender doesn’t have any effect on your sexuality. You can be gay and trans and it’s fine.”

He sighs. “I know it just feels, wrong, it feels like I have to choose one or the other, even though I know I don’t.”

He looks completely defeated, and Shiro puts the scissors back down.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah I’m okay, just, can you finish cutting my hair?”

“Keith-”

“Shiro, please?”

He sighs and gives in, picking the scissors back up.

\---

Keith is usually back to their room by five on Mondays, and right now it’s almost six thirty. He hasn’t answered any of Shiro’s texts, and he’s starting to get worried. He opens the door to go out and look for him and almost trips over the person sitting next to the doorway.

Keith sits there with his knees drawn and his head on his arms.

“Keith?”

He nods, sniffling.

“I- what? Have you been here this whole time?”

He nods again, curling in on himself more.

“Come inside, okay?”

Keith stands, turning his body away from Shiro and walking inside. He sees the edges of a bruise around his eye and closes the door behind him gently.

“Did you get in a fight?”

And then Keith starts speaking so fast Shio can barely keep up.

“I didn’t mean to I really didn’t I tried really hard to not get mad and I did a great job! I was calm I was focused I didn’t feel like punching them, and then they started talking about you and I just, just, I didn’t know how to-”

He sounds like he’s on the edge of crying and turns towards him, eye swelling shut with a bruise. Shiro takes in his appearance. He’s got the obvious on his face, but he’s holding himself like his leg is hurt and he’s got split knuckles, something he hasn’t had since he was younger.

Shiro goes and gets the first aid supplies and sits him down in the kitchen. Keith is quiet again, bouncing his leg and chewing on his lip.

“How many were there?”

“Three.”

“How do they look?”

“I think I broke one guys arm.”

“Jesus Christ, Keith.”

“They threatened to expel me.”

“Over a fight?”

“It wasn’t fair but they said I started it and if I broke an arm then it’s my fault and I can’t believe I blew up like that I really tried not to Shiro I promise.”

“Keith, you don’t need to fight for me.”

“But they were saying-”

“I don’t care what they said. You shouldn’t be fighting for me, let alone fighting at all. You have to know when to fight and when not to. And at school is definitely not the place to fight.”

“I…”

“I know you’re having a hard time right now, even if you won’t tell me. But you don’t need to get in fights. You can talk to me, you know that, right?”

Keith doesn’t say anything, and he’s silent while Shiro finishes patching him up.

“I have some homework to do for tomorrow so I’m gonna do that.”

Shiro sighs and lets him go, after he’s sure that the injury on Keith’s ankle is just a twist.

He eats dinner alone.

\---

He knows Keith doesn’t want him to leave on the Kerberos mission, and he knows he won’t say anything about it. He tells him he’ll be back in no time, just about a year, and he’ll try and send video calls as often as he can.

Keith tells him to be safe and to bring him back some space rocks.

They all call home every couple of weeks, waiting until the signal is right to send back without much lag.

A few months pass and when Keith opens the video call, he instantly knows something’s wrong. His face is read and splotchy, and he looks like he hasn’t slept in days. His hair is tied back and greasy and he’s not looking at the screen.

“Keith?”

“Shiro I’m- I’m sorry.”

“Keith what’s wrong?”

“Mom and dad they- Shiro they-”

He covers his face with his hands and takes in a shaky breath. Shiro’s stomach drops.

“There was a fire at home and they didn’t make it.”

They… what?

He’s staring at the screen, not really looking at it, trying to process what he’s just been told. There’s a hand on his shoulder, and he looks up to see Matt.

“Takashi, please say something,” he hears from the screen.

He takes a deep breath and grounds himself.

“Are you okay?” he asks him, trying not to think about himself right now.

“Am I o- Shiro they were your parents before they were mine.”

“That doesn’t make them any less your parents. Are you okay.”

“I’m fine, are you?”

He’s not fine. He’s a mess and Shiro knows it. If he thinks about how he is, he’ll break in front of Keith, and he can’t let himself do that.

“Keith don’t lie to me.”

The screen fuzzes out for a second.

“I think our connection’s breaking up. I’m gonna go,” Keith says, and it’s small and shaky.

“Keith wait-”

“Call me tomorrow, Takashi,” and the call ends.

“Shiro,” Matt says, and he shakes himself off, gives himself a couple of seconds to breathe, and stands.

“I’m gonna go… check on our trajectory. The connection’s good right now. You should call Katie. Call your mom just-”

He chokes on his own words and walks out, fists balling at his sides.

\---

When Shiro is captured by the Galra, he knows that Keith will think the worst, think that he’s dead. Think that he has no one left in the world that cares about him.

He fights harder and harder to escape, memories muddling into some sort of fever dream hallucination. While Matt and his father are there, it’s better, but after they’re gone, everything disappears except the need to survive.

When his arm is taken, not even that remains, just a blur of pain as he tries to memorize the guards’ footfalls.

He’s not sure how he escapes, just knows that he does. He’s aware that he kills two Galra soldiers, maybe more. The escape pod back offers no answers, all he remembers was that there was a miraculous stash of food and water on board.

When he wakes up to see Keith and what looks like Katie and others that he doesn’t know, he thinks it’s another Galra mind trick, them finally breaking him and finding Keith in his memories. But slowly, slowly, he realizes that this is too elaborate for them to create. A magical blue lion that takes them through a wormhole to a ten-thousand year old princess? Too much.

Shiro notes that Keith hasn’t cut his hair, letting it grow out in the back and maybe cutting it out of the way of his eyes.

In all the mess of Galra and magic robotic lions, he hasn’t had a chance to really talk with him. He wants to, he really does, but he doesn’t know what to say.

It’s been over a year.

Neither of them is the same.

\---

Keith’s gotten riskier in his behavior. He barely listens to direction, him and his lion flying into the heat of battle. He doesn’t seem to have any care for himself whatsoever, ending up bloody and bruised almost constantly.

He doesn’t bother covering up his arms anymore, and Shiro can see exactly what he tried to ignore for years. It’s not like it stopped, he just doesn’t try to hide it.

Shiro doesn’t know what to do.

He knows something’s going on between Lance and Keith. Their bickering is less venomous, and Lance seems to take every chance he can get to touch Keith.

Shiro tries to let him know that he’s there to talk about anything, but it’s as if their relationship has taken a gigantic step back.

He corners him in the training room one night, when both of them have given up on sleeping.

“End training sequence,” he calls from the doorway, leaving Keith heaving in air and full of energy. He turns towards Shiro.

He’s bleeding from a cut on his shoulder and he looks like he wants to tear something apart.

“We need to talk,” is all that Shiro says.

“What’s there to talk about?” he sets his bayard down and crosses his arms, seemingly undisturbed by the blood dripping down his arm.

“You’ve changed.”

“And you haven’t?”

“That’s not what I said.”

Keith seems to consider this for a moment. “Fight me,” he offers.

“You’re hurt.”

“I don’t care,” like that wasn’t already apparent.

“Whoever wins, we both answer each other’s questions, alright?”

“Alright.”

Keith has gotten much better at fighting since the last time they trained together, almost two years ago. He’s still injured, though, and while they’re closely matched, Shiro’s still stronger.

He ends up face-down on the floor, arms shaking in the effort of pushing himself up. Shiro offers a hand and he begrudgingly takes it.

“We’re done,” Shiro says, and Keith nods in agreement.

“All honest answers?” he asks.

“All honest.”

Shiro sits, arms stretched out, head down. “I know there’s something going on with you and Lance.”

He can fell the mood shift.

“Why do you care?”

“Because you’re my brother? I worry.”

Keith is silent for a moment. “It’s complicated,” is what he settles on.

“How?”

“I haven’t told him.”

“Told him what?”

Keith motions up and down his torso like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

“You know you don’t have to tell him, right?”

“I know but I just-” he bites back his words.

“Keith, talk to me.”

“I feel like I owe it to him. If we’re going to… date, I think he should know. It’s not like I actually think he’d react badly, but there’s still the fact that he could.”

“I don’t think he’d take it bad. I know he was surprised about Pidge, but it wasn’t a bad sort of surprised. You should tell him when you’re comfortable, though.”

Mmm,” is all he says in return, sitting down next to him.

“How were you really when… mom and dad died?”

Shiro stiffens.

“I told you, I was fi-”

“You said honest answers.”

He rubs his hands over his face and groans.

“Not great,” he admits. “I wasn’t prepared for it, and I just tried really hard to ignore all my emotions. I honestly tried to focus on how you were doing because I knew if I thought about myself I would-”

He’s choking on his words now. He hasn’t let himself dwell on the fact that his parents are dead. Oh, he’s really never going to see them again.

“Takashi, I’m sorry.” Keith’s wrapped his arms around Shiro and they’re both trying not to cry now.

“How’d you get kicked out of the Garrison?” It’s thick and broken, but if he doesn’t change the subject now, he’s going to start crying, and he really doesn’t want to do that.

“Shiro-”

“Honest answers.”

He avoids eye contact. “When you and your crew disappeared, they called it pilot error. I knew there was no way it was your fault but, there was nothing anyone else was saying and I tried not to believe it but…”

He twists his hands together, biting at his lip. “People started saying things about it, about the crew, about you and how you must have really fucked up the flight for them to not send a rescue mission out after you.”

Shiro knows exactly where he’s going with this. Keith never was good at the whole patience part of his training.

“I told them that you would have never, there was no way you could have crashed the ship but they wouldn’t shut up. I, um, there were three of them and not one of them was able to land a hit.”

“Keith-”

“Iverson threatened to kick me out, but they still wouldn’t have, even then. I knew he was hiding something, and I threatened him, and they booted me.”

“I told you, you don’t need to fight for me.”

“You were dead, Shiro! Who the fuck else was supposed to fight for you?”

Shiro looks at him, and he sees the tears threatening to fall and pulls him into a hug.

“I’m here now.”

“You were dead and mom and dad were dead and everyone was dead and I didn’t know what to do.”

He’s trying to be quiet, but Shiro can hear the way his voice is shaking and how he’s sucking in air, and just holds him tighter.

“Everyone’s gone, Shiro.” He starts sobbing, and Shiro’s doing his best to keep himself together.

“I’m here I’m here I’m here,” he keeps repeating into the top of Keith’s head, rocking the both of them in place, and hiccupping back his crying.

When Keith is done crying and Shiro is done pretending that he’s not crying, he’s takes him back to his room and cleans the cut on his shoulder.

“You push yourself too hard,” he says, not really thinking about what he’s saying. “You think we don’t notice, but we do.”

Keith is silent, shame coloring his cheeks.

“I’m here whenever you need me, you know. I know you’re trying to get everyone used to seeing you all cut up and bruised, but that doesn’t make it any less unsettling.”

“I’m sorry,” Keith say, looking down at his hands.

“You don’t need to be. I know you don’t want to talk about it, but I’m here for you, Keith. I always have been. You can come to me whenever you need to.”

He nods, and Shiro finishes placing the bandages on him.

“You should get some sleep.”

“So should you.”

“We’re not talking about me right now, though.”

“Takash-”

“Keith.” He can see exactly how tired he is, exhaustion sitting on his shoulders like a weight. The bags under his eyes are dark. Shiro will still be up for a few more hours. “Go sleep.”

He nods this time, defeated. Shiro pulls him into one last hug before he leaves, careful of the now bandaged cut. Keith mumbles a quiet, “Don’t die on me again,” before leaving him with his thoughts.

He thinks he can manage that.


	2. This isn't actually a second chapter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So remember how i said my computer deleted th original version of this fic? well look what showed back up on my computer

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> personally i think this part of this fic is better written than the one that got published, but *shrugs*  
> so this isn't actually a second chapter, It's just what I originally wrote that disappeared for a while. It ends at the part where Keith tells Shiro he's gay and it's very unfinished. I'm not adding onto this part.  
> I just feel like it should be out there  
> so here we go

Shiro meets her when she’s nine, scowl already sitting on her face. He’s sixteen, the magical number he’s realizing isn’t really all that different from fifteen or fourteen. He smiles at her and she does nothing, arms crossed defensively in front of her.

His mom and dad are finalizing adoption papers, stuff he should probably be paying attention to but isn’t. He sticks out a hand for her to shake, but she just stares at it, eyebrows drawing closer together.

“My name’s Takashi Shirogane, but you can call me Shiro.”

She keeps staring for a second longer before accepting his hand in hers. “Karen.” She says it like it burns. He tries to keep the mood light and smiles really big.

“I’ve never actually met a Karen before. You think it’s one of those really common names because everyone makes it out to be, but it really isn’t!”

“Well I’ve never met a Takashi before and no one says that it’s a common name so I guess you’re winning here.”

The snark catches him off guard, but he laughs all the same.

“I guess you’re right.”

She looks like she’s contemplating whether to smile or scowl some more, so she settles on an uncomfortable mix of both. Shiro looks at his parents.

“They look like they’re almost done. Are you ready?”

It’s an innocent question, but she clutches at her bag a little tighter. “Yeah,” she says, and it’s small. Shiro doesn’t really know what to do with that so he just sort of stands there awkwardly while waiting for his- _their-_ parents.

He hopes it’s not always this forced.

\---

So far, it has always been this forced.

Karen hasn’t called their mom and dad mom and dad yet, which, if he’s being honest, Shiro can’t blame her. It’s been two months and he imagines that’s a big jump. Calling strangers your parents just sound uncomfortable.

She almost refuses to talk to him, though. What conversations they do have are short, initiated by Shiro, and answered with one to two word answers. She won’t tell him what she likes, won’t tell him how school is, won’t tell him why she keeps getting into fights at school.

He figured he’d be a better option than their parents, seeing as he’s closer to her age, not by much, but he’s still in school at least. But no. Nothing. The most she’ll do is let him wrap her hand when she comes home with it bruised again.

Until one day, she knocks on his closed door.

“Mom, I told you I’m doing homewo-”

He does not open the door to see his mom.

Karen looks nervous, fidgety, almost angry.

“What’s up?” he says as casually as he can, because she never starts conversations, certainly never knocks on his door.

“Can you cut my hair?”

“What?”

He’s taken by surprise. Why not ask their mom? She’s the one that knows how to use scissors on hair.

“Can you cut my hair,” she repeats again, somehow sounding smaller than she did a minute ago.

“Why not ask mom?”

“She’s not home and I don’t, I don’t know that she’d say yes.”

“Why wouldn’t she say yes?”

“Because I want it short like yours.”

He stops at that. She wants it short? Boy short?

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah,” she says, and Shiro realizes sibling bonding time is coming to a close if she’s started answering in one word answers.

Well, if she wants to rebel against society’s hair standards, who is he to stop her?

“Okay.”

Her face lights up.

“Really?”

“Well yeah. Everyone’s gotta cut all their hair off sometime.”

She practically bounces to the bathroom with him, and he’s never seen her this happy.

“Let me just say that I definitely don’t cut hair regularly so if I screw this up, you’ve been fairly warned.”

She nods, hair flopping everywhere. he takes the scissors and make the first cut.

For a little bit, it’s just the sound of scissors, until he tentatively tries asking her what she likes again.

He learns a lot by cutting her hair. That her favorite color is red, but sometimes she hates it and switches to black. That she really likes it when they play kickball at recess, but not foursquare. She lets slip that she hasn’t learned how to ride a bike yet, and he files that away to tell their parents later. He learns that she really, really, _really_ likes space.

“And did you know that there’s this constellation that looks like a triangle that’s fabled to be three sisters who were trapped in a tree by a bear? I mean, that’s the shortened version of it, I can’t remember the whole story, but isn’t that so cool?”

He hasn’t said a lot during this, letting her talk, but he says an enthusiastic yes to let her know he’s still listening.

“It’s okay to like boy things if you’re a girl, right?”

He falters, hands stilling. “Of course it is. Why wouldn’t it be?”

“The kids at school say it’s not.”

“Well the kids at school are gonna hate your haircut.”

It takes him a second to realize he’s said the completely wrong thing, Karen’s shoulder’s tense and he swears silently.

“What I _meant_ to say, instead of that, was that you shouldn’t care what they say. If you want to have short hair and play kick ball and do ‘boy’ stuff, other people shouldn’t matter. If you’re happy, who cares what they say?”

She’s quiet, and Shiro realizes he’s fucked up.

“I also know that that’s such cliché advice to give. So is that ‘just ignore them’ cra- stuff.”

“Shiro I know the word crap.”

She’s laughing a little, which is better.

“Is this why you’ve been getting into fights?”

“I’m not trying to, I’m really not. They just keep saying things and I get so, so, so mad! I want them to shut up and stop talking and I say that and they just get meaner and I-”

“Hey whoa, slow down. Take a breath, Karen. Breathe.”

She does and Shiro sets the scissors down. He’s been done for a while, pretending to cut hair so they can keep talking. He comes around to where she’s facing and sits on his heels so that they’re the same height.

“I know you get mad, but sometimes you have to let the anger go. Mom used to tell me that ‘patience yields focus’ which I thought was really dumb when I was your age. I got in fights in elementary school because I liked ‘girlier’ stuff than other boys. She taught me how to let the anger go, how to focus on what was and wasn’t worth fighting about. That sometimes you have to let things go.”

She looks let down, like she’s trying not to show it.

“But she also taught me how to fight.”

“Really?”

“Mhm. Mom taught me how to punch people without hurting my hands and how to block other people’s hits and how to win a fight almost effortlessly.”

Karen looks like she just got the best news of her life, and she might have.

“The first part’s just as important. Probably more so. I’ll teach you how to fight, but I’m teaching you to focus first.”

She nods again, and all the tiny pieces of hair left on her face shower down around her.

“But first, take a shower. You’ve got hair all over you.”

She seems to have forgotten that he was cutting her hair, because she jumps up to look at the mirror. Her hands sift through it. A little choppy, but Shiro thinks he did an alright job. Her smile solidifies that.

“Thank you, Takashi.”

It’s small, but he catches it. And he smiles back in return.

\---

Shiro’s fully moved into living at the Garrison. He could have when he was fourteen, but he wanted to stay at home. His parents were there, his friends were there, and after a few years, Karen was there.

But he’s almost twenty one, and if he’ going to spend so much time at the Garrison anyways, he might as well move in.

He is an adult, after all.

Karen recently turned thirteen, and their parents finally got her a phone of her own, and she’s been texting Shiro non-stop since he moved in.

He tries to remind himself that she doesn’t have a lot of friends, to be a good older brother and respond, but he can’t.

He is, actually, busy a lot more now that Garrison can just call on him whenever they need him, but sometime he says he’s busy even when he’s not, just to get some time alone to himself.

This goes on for a few months, past his own birthday, where he notes that she didn’t really try to talk to him much at all. She sends less and less texts, and he knows something’s wrong, but his workload gets heavier and he forgets to message back.

Shiro gets a phone call from his mom, asking him to come home this weekend, if he can, because she’s getting worried about Karen and he’s the only one she talks to and he mentally curses himself for ignoring her.

So he comes home that weekend, telling his superior officer that there were problems at home he needed to deal with. She sends him home without question.

His mom says that she and his dad will be out of the house when he gets home, but Karen should still be there.

He opens the front door find her sitting on the couch, knees draw, headphones on, doodling in her sketchbook.

She barely glances up, takes out one headphone.

“Hey,” he starts, unsure of what to say.

“I know mom asked you to come home this weekend.” There’s a bitterness that he should have expected, but surprises him nonetheless.

“She did, but I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

There’s blood on her fingers, he notes, and if he wasn’t worried before, he certainly is now.

“Well, there are easier ways to do that than coming home from your super packed schedule.”

Ouch.

“Karen I-”

She puts the other earbud back in.

That makes him unreasonably mad. She’s just going to ignore him? He never

Did that

To her.

Oh.

He sits next to her on the couch, not close enough to see what’s on the page, but she closes the book anyway.

She yanks the headphones out.

“Fight me.”

“Okay,” he says, because he owes her this, a fair fight, something to level her head. She never was good at the whole focusing part.

It’s messy and dirty and she lands a lot of low blows because he’s maybe going easy on her, letting her take her frustrations out on him. She just yells and runs at him.

“Actually fight me!”

So he does and wins in a matter of seconds. She’s on the ground, clasping her hand over a part of her arm that he knows he didn’t hit. He sees red seep through part of her shirt.

“Why are you bleeding?”

He says it with a sense of urgency that he hasn’t used all day.

“Takashi-” she tries to deflect.

“No, this is hand to hand you shouldn’t be bleeding.”

“Shiro just-”

“Is this why mom called me back home? Because Karen this-”

“Don’t call me that!”

He’s shocked into silence. Call her what?

“Call you what?”

She doesn’t say anything, eyes shut tight, lips locked together. He pulls the both of them into a standing position.

He waits, because he hasn’t done enough listening lately, and she’ll tell him eventually.

“I don’t want to go by Karen anymore.”

He’s still quiet, waiting, figuring thing out in his head.

“I-” she starts, then stops, digging her hands into her arm. She breathes, low like he taught her.

“I want to be called Keith.”

It clicks in Shiro’s head, and his eyes widen.

“You what?”

“I think I’m a boy,” is all she says in return, voice quiet and shaky.

He, Shiro thinks numbly to himself. It’s He now.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” and then realizes he’d been trying to this whole time but he’s been ignoring every text like a jackass.

“Because you never had time and I figured you had enough to deal with without putting this on top.”

He looks hurt and sad and Shiro can’t help but to pull him into a hug.

“Have you told mom and dad?”

“No,” he says quickly, arms tightening.

“Do you want me to help you tell them?”

He pauses for a minute, like he actually has to consider it, like he didn’t think that Shiro would help him. It hits him how bad of a brother he’s been.

Keith ends up nodding and they settle on the details inside over hot chocolate.

\---

Keith is accepted into the Garrison the next year, and elects to stay on campus.

Their parents had taken it well, just like Shiro thought they would. They legally change his name so that he doesn’t have to deal with going up to every teacher and explaining his situation.

Shiro pulls some strings and they’re able to room together.

He didn’t expect Keith to be as good as he is right away, but he gets to the top of his class almost immediately. He’s still antisocial, but Shiro’s trying to work on that.

He invites his friend Matt over more, so that Keith maybe gets the idea that making friends is a good idea. Instead, they end up immersed in conspiracy theories and Shiro wonders why he ever thought this would be a good idea.

It’s an equally bad idea because Shiro is trying so hard to deny the feelings that he’s getting for Matt, but he still wants Keith to get used to more people, so he just keeps inviting him over.

It’s the worst.

He can’t keep it to himself anymore, so when he’s cutting Keith’s hair, he lets it spill.

“I mean he’s just, really pretty. Have you seen his face? That has got to be a crime.”

“I didn’t expect you to be this gay, Shiro. And yet, I’m not surprised”

“Hey hey, I prefer pan, but _god_ Keith he’s literally the description of a hot nerd what do I even do with that?”

“Make out with his hot nerd face?”

“I can’t do that! What if he doesn’t even like boys? And even then, there’s no guarantee that he’d even like me. Why would he like me? What do I even have to offer?”

“Takashi, breathe.”

He takes in a shaky breath.

“Please don’t have your pan crisis while you have a sharp object next to my head, thanks.”

“Sorry,” he mumbles, resuming the snip snip of the scissors.

“That doesn’t mean stop talking, I just didn’t want you to accidentally cut off my ear.”

He jumps right back into talking about how pretty Matt’s eye are and how great he is at everything, and Keith just sighs.

\---

Keith walks in on Matt and Shiro kissing, and leaves right away with double thumbs up.

\---

Shiro is still the only one Keith will let cut his hair. After that one time when he was nine, he won’t let anyone else near him with scissors.

They use it as a time to talk to each other about whatever.

Keith is fifteen and Shiro’s noticed the way he’s been keeping quieter lately. There’s something on his mind, and Shiro won’t push it. He knows that he’ll talk when he’s ready.

So when he’s cutting Keith’s hair and he starts to talk, Shiro isn’t surprised.

“I think I’m gay.”

“Okay,” Shiro says, and finishes his statement with a snip of the scissors.

“That’s okay?” Keith sounds confused, and Shiro stops cutting.

“Why wouldn’t it be?”

“I just, I can be both and you don’t care?”

“Keith, you can like whoever you want and it doesn’t affect your gender. You don’t have to choose one or the other. It’s okay to be both.”

He’s quiet for a second, and then he says, “Okay.”

Shiro goes back to cutting his hair.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i like it better than what I rewrote, but it's whatever

**Author's Note:**

> i had to rewrite the entire first half because i saved it like twice and then i opened my computer this morning and i looked everywhere but word said that it didnt exist anymore i was SO MAD  
> this should honestly becalled the author doesnt know how to stay in character at all EVER  
> my buddy noemi told me i should name it O BOI BROTHER  
> O BOI BROTHER OUR PARENTS ARE DEAD AND YOURE IN SPACE ISNT THAT GREAT  
> im really tired rn i hope you liked this


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